The New York Times sparked backlash, including from the White House, after its editorial board published an op-ed Wednesday criticizing President Joe Biden’s decision to sign multiple executive orders at the start of his presidency.
The board noted that Biden “has issued a raft of executive orders and other actions” just one week into his tenure. The NYT board argued that “this is no way to make law” and urged Biden to “ease up on the executive actions.” (RELATED: Meghan McCain Says It’s Time For Biden To Work ‘With The Other Side’)
“A polarized, narrowly divided Congress may offer Mr. Biden little choice but to employ executive actions or see his entire agenda held hostage,” the board wrote. “These directives, however, are a flawed substitute for legislation. They are intended to provide guidance to the government and need to work within the discretion granted the executive by existing law or the Constitution.”
“They do not create new law — though executive orders carry the force of law — and they are not meant to serve as an end run around the will of Congress,” it continued. “By design, such actions are more limited in what they can achieve than legislation, and presidents who overreach invite intervention by the courts.”
The piece also asserted that Biden will need to “hammer out agreements with Congress.”
Ronald Klain, the Chief of Staff for the White House, replied to the accusations in the op-ed.
“We are not taking executive action in lieu of legislation: we are taking executive action to fix what Trump broke in the executive branch, and to keep the President’s commitments to use his power — within appropriate limits — to make progress on four crises,” Klain wrote on Thursday.
We are not taking executive action in lieu of legislation: we are taking executive action to fix what Trump broke in the executive branch, and to keep the President’s commitments to use his power — within appropriate limits — to make progress on four crises. https://t.co/BUHLWRaYcp
— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) January 28, 2021
White House communications director Kate Bedingfield pushed back on the article as well, writing that “of course we are also pursuing our agenda through legislation.”
Action. So my question is which actions that the President took to reverse Donald Trump’s executive orders would they have liked to see him not pursue? /2
— Kate Bedingfield (@WHCommsDir) January 28, 2021
The Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal was another individual who took issue with the NYT’s piece, accusing the board of not comparing Biden’s executive actions to those signed by former President Donald Trump.
“The point of this piece, the ONLY point, is to appease the white supremacists and other Republican aligned forces, who complain about the ‘liberal media,'” Mystal wrote before accusing the newspaper’s opinion section of “ASS COVERING.”
“It’s so some fucking guy can go on TV and say ‘no no no, we’ve been critical of the Biden administration as well,'” he added.
And the reason for that is that this is edit not interested in presenting a well thought out opinion of PRINCIPLE, nor is it actually trying to PERSUADE anybody to do anything, or even rile up “the choir.”…
It’s just trying to play cowardly both side bullcrap.
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) January 28, 2021
This is ASS COVERING, by the @nytopinion so somebody who does not actually exist will go on white nationalist TV and say “actually, the Times is balanced. Look at this facile trash they just published.”
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) January 28, 2021
The Nation’s national affairs correspondent and CNN contributor Joan Walsh declared it to be “utterly moronic” while Tim Fullerton, the former head of former President Barack Obama’s digital team, simply wrote that the piece was “silly.”
Biden’s executive orders have so far been the bare *minimum* of what is necessary on issues like climate, and here comes the NYTimes ed board with the worst possible take. https://t.co/eIZ2mRTcNY
— Bassam Khawaja (@Bassam_Khawaja) January 28, 2021
“What the literal fuck,” Imani Gandy, senior editor at Rewire News Group, tweeted.